Milan

Matt Mullican is a polymath. A performer, an archivist, and a maker of exquisite objects, he was among the first artists to anticipate early computer technology with an exceptionally varied visual languagebefore fractured attention was a deficit. After finishing his studies at CalArts in 1974, emerging from feminist art discourses into the circle of the Pictures artists, Mullican worked with hypnosis to create a performance personawho may or may not be the artist himself, but who has generated an enormous body of drawings over a span of forty years. Such works are often installed to guide the viewer through the artist’s “five worlds,” or levels of perception. In the spectacular halls of HangarBicocca, Mullican’s ability to shape our consciousness (or to make us think he can) will unfold in a built environment designed by the artist. Surveying his sculptures, rubbings, light boxes, and works on paper, this major retrospective will function as an immersive, quasi-architectural object, documented in an accompanying catalogue for those who miss it.